Chapter 18 #2
She wants me to be needled by this. She wants me to admit I don’t know who Fi is, so she can reveal some sketchy story about my husband I’m obviously unaware of: an ex he’s not over, an underage girl he got caught with.
Something that will make me doubt him or the depth of our relationship.
Best case, she wants me to know I wasn’t his first choice, and if so, the joke’s on her: I know that better than anyone alive.
And I’m never anyone’s first choice, anyway.
“I suppose he just hadn’t met the right girl,” I reply coolly.
Her smile flickers out for only half a second…but I catch it. Was she among the hordes of women who wanted Theo at one time? It’s hard to imagine that she didn’t succeed in getting him, at least briefly, if she tried.
Theo returns to my side with another round but seems even more stiff and unhappy than he was before. We’re not halfway through our drinks when his hand wraps around mine—the first hint of affection all night, or what would be affection if it was at all genuine.
“Are you ready to go?” he asks.
I turn and suddenly our faces are too close.
Close enough that we could easily kiss, the way a new couple might, but I’m too irritated to fake things right now.
I’m irritated by most of his dumb friends, by his reserve, by the fact that he has kept so much information to himself.
I mean, for fuck’s sake, I specifically asked him what I needed to know on the way here.
Fi never came up once. And I still have no idea what happened to all his supposed money.
“Very,” I reply. My voice is quiet, but he hears something in my tone. There’s a flicker of alarm in his gaze before he smiles at everyone and announces our departure.
I’m hugged and promised lots of fun on my next visit to London—Peter is the only one who seems to mean it—and then, at last, Theo and I are outside in the quiet night. I march in the direction of his car, and he keeps pace.
All I want in the entire world is to dissect this by phone with Bronwyn. I’d climb into bed and tell her every detail simply to hear her gasp in outrage on my behalf.
Well, if I was discussing a guy I hadn’t stolen from her, that is.
“Is something wrong?” he asks. The boredom in his tone, as if he’s already certain my issues are hyperbolic, sets me on edge.
“If you’d hoped to sell that to your friends, you failed miserably,” I tell him.
“I never thought for a minute we’d sell that,” he replies.
Asshole.
Because I tried. I really tried, and he did not, as I’m apparently nowhere near the amazing Fi, whoever the fuck she is.
I’m so far from being Fi that it’s fucking laughable I even came out tonight and attempted this—nearly as laughable as believing, for a moment, that Theo might like me just as I am.
He doesn’t even like the girl I’m pretending I am.
I take two steps toward the car and round on him. “Who’s Fi?” I blurt. Shit. I’m jealous. I have no idea why. But I’m definitely jealous, and I sure didn’t hide it well just now.
A muscle pulses in his cheek. “I assume Wendy mentioned her.”
It infuriates me that there really is something there, and that he’s still not answering. “Look, I don’t give a shit who you dated before, but if you’ve got a bunch of skeletons in your closet, speak up now because you make us both look like assholes when those skeletons are referenced publicly.”
He frowns. “You’re right—I should have told you. Fi is Fiona. She was my fiancée.”
My gaze jerks up to his. There were any number of responses I’d anticipated, but this wasn’t one of them. “You had a fiancée? You?”
His hand wraps around my waist to pull me away from the road as a car flies past. “Is it really so shocking? After all, I now have a wife.”
God, he’s so annoying. It shouldn’t take an hour to get this fucking story out of him.
“Presumably you weren’t pretending she was your fiancée for financial gain, however.
So you were engaged and…what happened? You realized there was a lingerie model you hadn’t yet banged? You accidentally decapitated her?”
He tosses his keys in the air and catches them. “You know me so well, wifey. I barely need to tell you a thing.”
Something in his unhappiness leaves me feeling guilty, though I don’t know why. “I’m forced to presume you were at fault given how cagey you’re being about it now.”
He frowns as he opens the car door for me. “No. I wasn’t. Can we leave it at that?”
I turn to face him. “I’d rather not. Seriously, Theo. If it somehow comes up again, I don’t want to be the only person in the room without a clue what happened.”
His jaw grinds, and then he releases a heavy sigh. “Penelope, Kieran’s wife, was friends with Fiona. I came to learn that Fiona knew she was cheating and helped cover for her. She lied to my face and to Kieran’s for months. I saw their texts myself. Please don’t discuss this on camera.”
My mouth opens to insist that I wouldn’t—that I do actually have some boundaries—but I can hardly fault him for asking when he hasn’t seen much evidence of boundaries thus far. I slide into my seat and wait until he’s in the car too before I turn his way.
It’s still shocking that he cared about anyone enough, at some point in his life, to marry her for real. It’s probably even stranger that I’m shocked. He’s a good guy, despite the surly attitude. Why shouldn’t he have wanted the things everyone else does?
I turn back to face the street, because I’m not sure what I should even say to him.
I’m sorry it happened, but I’m also irritated.
Yes, his friends are jerks, and he didn’t beg me to meet them, and I can understand why he didn’t volunteer all the stuff about his fiancée.
But, despite my many failings, I’d be a better friend to him than the people I met tonight, yet he clearly doesn’t consider me one.
I know why my family treated me like a loose cannon and a failure and someone you hold at arm’s length…but why does he?
“I would never discuss something like that on camera,” I tell him as he pulls onto the road. “Do you think it would have changed things, if she’d told you?”
His jaw shifts. “I know it would have,” he grits out. “If he’d heard it from me instead of some fucking journalist, if he hadn’t been alone…”
He trails off, but I can figure out the rest.
It must have been a lot to contend with at once. Before his brother died, Theo was the head of a really successful company, had a brother he was close to, and was, theoretically, happily engaged. A year after, he’d lost all of it, and was guilty about his brother’s death to boot.
“What happened to your money?” I ask. I might as well get all the questions out now, and this is one that’s bothered me for a while. “You sold your big company, but you claim to have even less than I do, so what happened?”
He pulls up in front of my hotel and puts the car in park. “I used a chunk of it to buy Kieran’s share of Families Travel from his wife, and the rest is in a trust I can’t touch.”
It sounds like he basically made two really bad investment decisions, but I’ve fought with him enough for one night.
I reach for the door. “Well, I’d thank you for a lovely evening but…” I let my shrug say the rest.
He ignores this. “What do you have planned for tomorrow?”
My shoulders sag. “There’s this restaurant my family was supposed to eat at our first night here with this press-for-champagne button. I’ve got a reservation there at eight.”
“Alone?”
I swallow. It seemed like the kind of thing I should do, under the circumstances, but now I’m not so sure. “Well, I don’t know anyone in London, so unless you’re open to me going on British Tinder—”
“It’s just called Tinder here, Rebecca, and I am not.”
“Then yes, I’m going there alone.”
He appears to dislike this as well, frowning as I reach for the door. He frowns at me a lot for someone whose friends are such dicks.
“Does it not concern you at all that two of your oldest friends tried to make you look bad?” I ask, turning toward him.
He doesn’t entirely meet my eye. “They both have their own things going on right now.”
I already know he won’t say more, and I wish he would. Even if he gave me a few of his secrets tonight, it still wasn’t enough.
I want all of them.
· · ·
I wake to a sunny but cool London morning, with no sign of the weather system currently drowning Amsterdam. I don the sweatshirt Theo got me, though it’s just as dorky as it was a few days ago, and head out, darting around the city by Tube and taxi to get in as much as possible.
I race through Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London.
I rush from there to the City of London, giving St. Paul’s only the most cursory glance before I wander in search of all the streets named after what they once sold: Bread Street sold bread, Honey Lane sold honey, Cock Lane sold…
prostitutes. That fact would have made Bronwyn laugh while Jessie rolled her eyes, so I’d have brought it up more than once.
I conclude by taking the Tube to Covent Garden and standing in line for the ice cream Bronwyn wanted to try.
The girls ahead of me chatter to each other, checking their phones.
That would have been us—me dealing with drunken texts from Brian back on the West Coast, her telling me to block him while lamenting Theo’s absence.
My appetite has dwindled to nothing by the time I reach the kiosk. I order rhubarb with hot custard because that’s what Bronwyn would have gotten—she always ordered the strangest combinations—and then I burst into tears and walk off without waiting for it to arrive.
For the first time I wonder if going to the press-for-champagne restaurant is a good idea after all. I suspect it’s not, but it just feels like something I have to do. As if I’m closing some loop, and things will be better once it’s done, though I already know they won’t.